Day: June 3, 2015

Christians have long-held to the idea of hating the sin and loving the sinner. When it comes to LGBTQ people, some Christians will maintain friendships with people who are homosexual, bisexual, transgender, etc. All the while, they think their “lifestyles” are sinful, and they secretly hope they will one day see the light. These Christians are generally genuinely nice to these LGBTQ people. These Christians are normally good people who are just confused due to their religion. To some degree, I can tolerate these types of Christians, so long as they don’t actively try to undermine the people who are different from them. I don’t agree with them, but I can tolerate them. Even if their position is ridiculous, I don’t want to live in a world where people are shunned based on merely wrong ideas.

However, what I won’t tolerate is outright intolerance. I don’t follow the Kardashians, but today on my facebook I, unfortunately, saw a post by a pastor calling Caitlyn Jenner’s transition sick. This is unacceptable behavior. One may disagree with transgendered people. I might not want to be your friend, but I can tolerate disagreeing with someone. Calling someone sick is completely different . That’s not just disagreement. That’s outright prejudiced, hateful, and uncivilized behavior.

Yes, I find myself occasionally intolerant of intolerant people, and there is a difference between tolerance and acceptance. People don’t seem to understand this. I can tolerate a person who disagrees with homosexuality but is otherwise a lovely person. I can work with them etc. Still, I would like to convince this person that they are wrong. A homosexual might hope one day to be just as accepted as a straight person, but no one can make or force someone to do this. By acceptance, I mean seeing a person as no different from yourself and not being in disagreement with their way being in the world. By tolerance, I mean treating a person fairly even if there is a disagreement with their way of being in the world. Acceptance is the LGTBQ community should be aiming towards. Still at the very least, tolerance is a necessary condition. If someone is intolerant of LGBTQ people, that is bigoted regardless of religious ideology.